Not necessarily. A heart attack is when a blood vessel in the heart becomes blocked and deprives the heart muscle of blood flow and oxygen. A stroke is the same thing except the blood vessel that becomes blocked is in the brain. A stroke could be called a brain attack since it is just like a heart attack. The two don t always follow each other, but if a person has clogged arteries, either can happen if a clot breaks loose, it just depends where the clot gets stuck, the heart or the brain.